Kakadu and away

Saturday, December 5, 2009

So the next day we naturally missed the sunrise again and decided to head back to Katherine just to film a little more. That done we headed off to finally visit Kakadu which was the whole point of the trip anyway, or so I had figured. During the long car journey I bombarded Kate with questions, something I had been doing pretty much every second we weren’t filming. She did all the driving (a lot of companies wont rent out a car to someone under 21) and we talked about a story I have been working on for a while pointing out that my female characters were a little underdeveloped, I had 1, and about 6 male characters with more popping up all the time. So maybe she had a point. She also explained pretty much everything there is to know about Reiki, which was rather fascinating.

Eventually we got to Kakadu and our intended spot; Ubirr, we viewed the art and climbed up to enjoy the scenery, stopping every now and then to film something that I had no idea what I would do with, so far the film had been in many directions and none of them worked so I was feeling a little stressed about the whole thing. We climbed the rock and I tried not to faint as we stumbled about in the sun, getting excited by the prospect of something to climb and then almost injuring myself in my delirious, overheated state. Ubirr is a rock, a big rock, which has a wonderful 360 view of wetlands, rock and more rocks. Ok so perhaps that explanation was a little rubbish. We could see for miles in every direction, right into Arnham land (aboriginal land where permits are required for entry) one side and a lake on the other, then of course the rest of the view would be the rocks I mentioned which were equally spectacular. When we finally left it was almost sunset, we had planned on getting at least half way back so as to be able to drop off the car in the morning easily… with 300km to go this of course didn’t happen, in fact nothing so far had really gone to plan, not that it was a bad thing.

Finally we woke up before sunrise, at last! Not that we did anything with the sunrise after all but never mind. It was time to leave the Northern Territory at last, and for that I was quite grateful, having slept in the roasting car the night before due to the amount of wildlife around us, I was feeling pretty yuck, also I hadn’t really slept much. All in all it had been an intense 3 days, with plenty of madness and confusion, an information overdose, far to much heat and all whilst attempting to make a movie. Kate dropped me off at the Ghan train station where I then found out after she left that I hadn’t been able to sort out my ticket after all (I had no idea of the ticket situation due to the outback having no phone signal, me having no phone battery, my solar charger that powers my phone actually melting in the heat and not having actually spoken to the person who was activating my ticket) and that I wouldn’t be able to board this train. Bugger.

In the end one of the managers gave me a lift back into town where I booked my greyhound ticket instead and found Kate in her favourite café. Kate figured seeing as we had a half hour we might as well make use of the twist of fate and turn me into a real Reiki practitioner. So now I have magic healing hands of Reiki, which means I got a burger and then sat on a bus for 21 hours completing yet another sleepless night.

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